Command H.Q. is a strategic war game published by MicroPlay Software, a subsidiary of MicroProse Software. MicroProse is well known in the PC market to make good, interactive games of all types. Although it is huge in the IBM game market, it is relatively small in the Mac market. MicroProse had released only two games before Command H.Q. — Pirates! and Railroad Tycoon. But as anyone who played those games could attest, both of those were very good and very Mac-like, something that could not be said of many other ports to the Macintosh. Needless to say, after wasting countless productive hours playing with Railroad Tycoon, I could not wait to get my hands on Command H.Q.
After installing Command H.Q. on my hard disk, I started playing. I was immediately hooked as soon as the introduction came on, which can only described by the word "cool". After hearing the military march while looking at pictures of past wars, I was ready. Then came the copy protection. The game has one of those annoying "on page x, line y, what is the z word?" type copy protection schemes, forcing you to have the manual lying around to play. But as a side note, the game does give you the first letter of the word, so it's a little bit easier to find the word they're looking for. The copy protection scheme is probably one of the only negative attributes of the game.
The game has a lot of options. The first option of a new game is which war to play: 1918 is the end of World War I, 1942 is mid World War II, 1986 is a hypothetical World War III. Two other options include 2023, which is a random projection of the world in the future, and a fifth option of ????, where the two players start with only one city and must discover and take over the world. The fifth option is very similar to a Strategic Conquest type game, where the players build up their military from scratch.
After picking the time period, you must pick an opponent. You can play another human over the modem (IBM or Mac), or pick any of the five computer opponents, from extremely easy to very difficult (Mars - the God of War is the hardest). You can give the enemy a starting sum of money, and the game begins.
Playing the game is actually quite fun, though it does tend to get a bit complicated. The object of the game is to take over the enemy's capital(s), which can be done with tanks or infantry. Everything happens in real time, so while you're concentrating on Europe, your armies might be taking a beating in Asia. This is something few games, if any do. All the wargames I played in the past go through turns. But, as any real military commander knows, war doesn't proceed in turns, but everything happens all at once. The real-time play is probably one of the best features of the game.
The game also gets more complicated as the time period increases. In W.W.I, there are only three types of units you can buy. In W.W.III, there are about 10 different things you can buy, including satellites, nukes, and even foreign aid. Obviously, different time scales require different strategies.
While the game itself might be complicated, the program is not complicated to use. Everything is done with the mouse and menus, clicking and dragging. The keyboard can be used for short-cuts. The graphics, while not exactly taking the player's breath away, are functional enough, especially when playing in color (I found no difference in 256 versus 16 colors, though the program supports either monitor, as well as black and white). The sound effects, while not numerous, are of good quality and get the point across and they do help with the war operations. Another helpful program feature is that important happenings throughout the world are written in the bottom of the play window.
One minor complaint I have is that while Command H.Q. is complicated enough such that no two games should be similar, the game does not seem to use random effects of combat as much as it should. For example, in a single unit vs. single unit battle, you can pretty much always guess who's going to win after playing a few wars. Nevertheless, the game is complicated enough, especially with all the options, that this actually becomes an insignificant complaint.
I have had only one bug playing Command H.Q., and that is if I'm playing in 256-color mode for a long time, the monitor spontaneously freaks out (I mean really freaking out, forcing me to cold-shut down). I'm not sure if this is because of the game or my system, but it has worked flawlessly in 16 color mode, with system 7.0.1 on my Mac II. I've also tried it on a PowerBook 140 without any problems. Some other people seemed to have minor bugs, but other than the monitor problem, the program seems pretty clean.
Overall, I think that Command H.Q. is one of the best games out for the Mac, and I tend to be real picky about which games I like. There are always things that could be better (I wouldn't mind seeing 3D holograms with 8-channel stereo music), but if you are looking for a good strategic type wargame, Command H.Q. is a wonderful choice.
